Carbon fiber reinforced composite (CFRC) is an extremely strong and light fiber-reinforced plastic which contains carbon fibers. CFRCs are expensive to produce but are commonly used wherever high strength-to-weight ratio and rigidity are required, such as aerospace, automotive, civil engineering, sporting goods and an increasing number of other consumer and technical applications.
Material properties of the CFRC include two parts: binding matrix and carbon fibers. Unlike isotropic materials like steel and aluminum, CFRC has directional strength properties. Properties of CFRC depend on the layouts of the carbon fiber and the proportion of the carbon fibers relative to the binding matrix. Initial fiber orientation and initial shape of pre-forming two-dimensional workpiece affect finished product.
With advent of computer technology, computer aided engineering analysis (e.g., finite element analysis (FEA)) have been used for assisting engineers/scientists to design products and manufacturing procedures, for example, predicting initial shape and fiber orientation of a pre-forming workpiece made of CFRC. Then physical workpiece can be created according to the numerically-calculated initial shape and fiber orientation. In order to adequately and numerically calculating structural behaviors of a product/part/structure made of CFRC, material properties of CFRC are first obtained in a test laboratory. Prior art approaches have been treating CFRC as a single constitutive equation (i.e., stress-versus-strain relationship) by using various material types, for example, plastic, hyper-elastic, viscous-plastic and the likes. However, none of which can sufficiently characterize the mechanical behaviors of CFRC. In order to use numerical simulations to assist engineer to set up physical manufacturing of a product/part, it would be desirable to have improved methods and systems for numerically calculating structural behaviors of products/parts made of carbon fiber reinforced composite (CFRC).